Coronation Street star Beverley Callard has revealed that she was diagnosed with clinical depression and attempted to take her own life “half a dozen times.”

Speaking on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, Beverley, who plays Liz McDonald in the soap, opened up about how a £150,000 debt caused by the closure of two pubs she owned, led to her feeling “suicidally low”.

“I tried [to take my own life] maybe half a dozen times,” Beverley told Piers. “But it wasn’t a cry for help at all. I’d known for quite a while that I wasn’t myself, but I didn’t really know what to do about it.

“I was going to work and I was still filming and I didn’t really talk to anyone about it,” she added. “And on that day they took me into The Priory in the early hours of the next morning and John [her husband] said, and my doctor said, I looked like a 100-year-old woman.

“They tried different medications but none of them seemed to work.”

The 57-year-old explained that she began receiving electroconvulsive therapy, although it had a damaging effect on her short-term memory and left her struggling to learn her lines.

“I actually, now, don’t know how I learnt my lines,” said Beverley. “It was really a double life at that point. People stand on the gate waiting to meet people who are in Coronation Street and I couldn’t sign my autograph because I couldn’t remember how to spell my name.

“I truly couldn’t write my name for the first six months.”

Beverley is mother to 36-year-old Rebecca and 13-year-old Joshua, and has been married four times.

During her interview with Piers, the Leeds-born actress also revealed that she had an affair with her Emmerdale co-star, Ian Sharrock.

Looking forward Beverley says she plans to stay on her medication for “at least another couple of years” to keep her from ” going into that black hole.”